


Mementos

by shinebrightarmy_losthalorights



Series: some things stay the same [1]
Category: DC Extended Universe, Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Feels, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24011806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinebrightarmy_losthalorights/pseuds/shinebrightarmy_losthalorights
Summary: Diana lived lifetimes. She keeps her truths, and her mementos.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Series: some things stay the same [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738060
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Mementos

Ares is dead. Diana returns to London to face a sea of breathing, cheering people, celebrating the final culmination of the War to End All Wars. She lets herself stroke a single fingertip down a single photograph, and does not let her discipline deteriorate into weeping herself sick at nights for the other photographs pinned onto the wall, for the uncountable number of unbreathing people, for a single man who lived until he didn’t.  
  
Ares is dead, and it does not take long for humanity to breed another war. Humans have created their own god-killers, and unleashed all of it upon each other. This war is more in every way; more widespread, more deadly, more overwhelming. Uncontainable. During all this time, Diana does not return to Themyscira; moving across the rest of the world to do what she can, Diana does not encounter any other Amazonian. She is slowly growing to realize that she cannot return home.  
  
Diana fights a thousand preventable battles and pleads for peace in a thousand languages. But humans are blood thirst and desperation pressed into shape, and nothing Diana could do could persuade them to stop. Sometimes, the lure of what Ares had showed her is hard to dismiss as she stands amongst bullet-torn bodies, the terrain around her ripped by landmines. A paradise untouched by humanity, fuelled by their extinction.

The Second Great War ends with two atomic bombs. Diana hears the news on the radio, and thinks.

***

This is what she knows.

What she told Ares is true: it’s not about deserve. Ask Diana of Themyscira if spies, liars, murderers, smugglers deserve their loves and deaths and all the things they live, she cannot answer you. The more she extricates from human nature, the less certain she is about where some lines blur.  
  
But some lines stay the same. Humans are capable of mass weapons of the destruction and concentration camps and more. But they also fly planes to die in them, can trade one life for thousands, risk all that they love to smuggle strangers to save them because they cannot abide to not doing otherwise. She knows what she believes, and what Ares wanted can never come to pass.  
  


  
***  
  


  
A beautiful woman had gracefully agreed to dine with her, and now sits across her to ask if Diana had ever been in love. Diana tells Barbara, yes, a long, long time ago.

It is not a lie, but it is not the whole truth. She had been in love for a long, long time. In the age of technicolor and new media, Steve Trevor cannot be here; yet there he is. She pulls him in, and although he looks different, older and modernized, he feels exactly the same in her arms.

In the age of change faster than even Diana could fully understand, Steve Trevor is here; yet he cannot stay. Nothing good is born from lies.  
  


  
***  
  


  
The grief comes and goes.  
  
Sometimes when she looks upward to see blinking lights like stars, she feels gratitude, tenderness. An ache she will keep. Diana has lived lifetimes of mortals. She is fiercely glad that she never has to forget any of them.

Diana has not returned home since she left, but she gravitates to the fragments of Ancient Greece and Rome, finds employment museums, and eventually in the Louvre.  
  
The watch does not tick anymore. There are days when she forgets to bring it with her, to keep company as she works, if not keep time. Wayne's gift she keeps on her desk. He brought her back the crystal details of Steve's face, the way he parts his hair, the determination in his eyes. This is the Steve Trevor untouched by the Steve Trevor of 1984; she had missed him dearly.  
  
For that, Diana cannot repay Wayne. She suspects he knows, understands. So the fragile picture stays on her desk, encased in unbreakable glass. It makes her wonder just what the Batman wants from her.  
  


  
***  
  


  
The Cave is impressive. Her eyes land of the sleek plane, on display and clearly worth fortunes. From the looks of it, it is Wayne's second most precious crown jewel, aside from his suit.  
  
Diana closes her eyes. From the back of her mind, in the shadows of her memories, comes forth a silhouette that draws itself into the shape of a man.  
  
She opens her eyes a blink of a moment later. Her arms are crossed, caressing the rich black leather of her jacket sleeves, and not a beloved jawline, nor the gleaming metallic surface. Her mind is a thousand miles and decades away. She once knew a man who would have loved to fly it.  
  


  
***  
  


  
She still believes in love. 


End file.
